Valentine's Day

 What's a Saint Valentine celebration without hearts and chocolate? And what works both into the mix and makes all my Parisian neighbors happy? Shortbread and sprinkles! When I have a proper kitchen and not this chambre de bonne dans le haut Marais a Paris... I'll be happily posting again. Until then! Au revoir.

Bonjour Paris

Madeleines! Light and fluffy petite French cakes. My favorite little cookies to make and share. They are great with tea and can be flavored many ways. These are made with lemon zest added to the batter and lemon juice in the glaze.

I think another reason I love these is that they resemble sea shells. Next time I hope to try them with a little lavender added to the glaze and keep the batter just vanilla, and then dip them in earl grey tea... mmm...

I post these in tribute to my upcoming long stay in Paris!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

This was a really fun cake to make, funfetti inside and simple buttercream, and it was a total hit for the party!

I also made matching cupcakes to accompany the cake, just as cute.

Strawberry Love

A creation with my favorite fruit

 

Just for fun :)

Hogwarts Gingerbread Castle

 I just made this for the SPS Habitat for Humanity Gingerbread Cottage Competition 2010.

 Lots of gingerbread...

 Lots of fondant...

 

Lots and lots of sugar...

Meets Harry Potter Nerd

Happy Spring!

My first Hummingbird Cake!

I've been wanting to do this recipe for ages, and finally decided to go for it for a very special person born on the first day of spring. It is a banana-pineapple-coconut-pecan cake with cream cheese frosting.

And no, those are not fungi growing on top, as my roommate supposed, but actually homemade dried pineapple slices!  Really elegant and really quite easy. Just trim a pineapple and dig out the prickly parts, slice it thin and bake on a parchment paper lined pan for about a half hour at 225 F and flip over for another half hour. It depends on the thickness, mine took closer to an hour per side, but well worth it.

6" cake double layered, I really like making this size of cake. I think part of it is that I don't like to surprise people with a big 10"er because that's far too much cake without a party, 6" is still more than enough. But mainly, I think cakes are cute at this size. I'm thinking about cutting the layers in half next time and making it four layers, probably with a red velvet for Josh's birthday. Shh... he doesn't read this :)

With the left-over batter I made cupcakes, which decidedly divine by all who got a taste.

Cake Monochrome!

Alright, so cake was in order, and so cake has been made.

Inside it is a chocolate chip banana cake, and what you see covering it is a light layer of cream cheese frosting, all home made of course :)

 

(Just in case of amnesia, these are the same roses and leaves I created yesterday with the last post. Made of white chocolate "fondant" - not really fondant at all, and quite tasty too!)

One more close up for good measure.

(Thank you for the cake plate Amy! It's so handy for all these pretty pictures.) 

 

 

Here's a look inside!